Page 133 of Try Line Hearts
“That’s a hell of a thing to decide in the rain,” he said softly.
Lucas smiled faintly. “I’ve never been good at timing.”
Eli’s breath caught when Lucas said it.
“I love you.”
The words didn’t echo. They didn’t demand anything.
They simplylanded.
Eli closed his eyes.
A tear slipped free before he could stop it. He swiped at it quickly, embarrassed, then laughed—broken and breathless.
“Could get used to hearing that,” he said, voice thick.
Lucas felt his chest crack open, something long-held finally giving way.
“I love you too,” Eli said.
Lucas pulled him close then, arms wrapping around him like it was instinct, like it was muscle memory finally allowed to exist. Eli melted into him, chocolate still clutched loosely in one hand, forehead tucked under Lucas’s chin.
They lay there like that for a long time.
Rain and city and future humming quietly beyond the glass.
The chocolate rested forgotten on the bedside table.
In that instant, the past didn’t matter more than the present.
For once, choosing each other was enough.
Chapter Twenty: What Comes After
They didn’t rush.
That was the first decision, made without discussion sometime between waking and realizing the rain had finally stopped.
Lucas came to slowly, the way he rarely did—not jolted awake by an alarm or the weight of anticipation, not already halfway through a mental checklist. Instead, there was warmth first. Then weight. Then the steady, unmistakable rise and fall of another person breathing against him.
Eli.
Eli was warm in his arms.
Not warm the way someone was when you’d fallen asleep together by accident, knowing one of you would slip away before morning. This was different. This was unguarded. Eli lay sprawled on his stomach, hair a mess, one arm flung possessively across Lucas’s waist like he might wander off if not tethered.
Lucas didn’t move.
He watched him breathe for a long while, eyes tracing familiar details he hadn’t allowed himself to linger on in daylight before: the faint scar near Eli’s shoulder, the way his fingers twitched occasionally like he was chasing something in a dream.
And then it hit him.
Eli didn’t have to run off to his own room.
No scrambling for clothes.
No whispered goodbyes.
